Of Bruises and Bathtimes
by spindletwig
Summary: Join Kurt and Blaine as they tackle parenthood, and Kim and Evie as they tackle babysitting. It can't be that hard right? OC first person perspective, part of the Kim!verse, 2nd in series


**Hey hey hey! I know this has taken really bloody long, and to be honest I have no excuse, but what the hey, here it is. I don't have much to say except that I hope you like it as much as you liked our last adventure into Kim's world!**

**Disclaimer: Glee is not mine. Never has been, never will be. I also don't own 'Alone', 'The Omen', 'Rosemary's Baby' or anything else you recognise. Wow, that makes it sound like an awesome chapter...**

**EDIT: Forgot to add my usual desperate plea for reviews. So... please? **

**Also, feel free to follow me on tumblr at in-all-of-ohio :)**

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><p>'The importance of planning your lessons to adequate detail is great. An unplanned lesson can lead to a chaotic learning environment unless you are extremely good at thinking on your feet, and that is a chance we shouldn't take. So, today's lecture is about properly-'<p>

'_TILL NOW WE ALWAYS GOT BY ON OUR OWWWWWWN, I NEVER REALLY CARED UNTIL I MET YOU…'_

Shit.

'_AND NOW IT CHILLS ME TO THE BOOOOOOOOOOOONE'_

Stay inconspicuous. Nobody must know that it's you who has the ringtone of a drunk woman (namely yourself) singing a cheesy eighties power ballad.

'_HOW DO I GET YOU ALOOOOOOOOONE'_

I'm going to kill Blaine Hummel-Anderson.

'_HOW DO I GET YOU ALOOOOOOOONE'_

How does he always manage to do this without me noticing?

'_HOW DO I GET YOU ALOOOOOOOONE'_

Dear god it must be over soon…

'_HOW DO I GE-'_

Thank god. Crisis averted.

I breathed a sigh of relief and turned back to my extensive notes on the desk in front of me, when the lecturer coughed sharply.

'Ms Miller? Is there any reason you disrupted us with a painful rendition of 'Alone' whilst I was trying to explain the importance of proper lesson planning?'

Or not.

* * *

><p>'Care to explain why last weeks drunken performance of 'Alone' went off halfway through one of my lectures today?'<p>

I heard Blaine snort on the other end of the line, before the sound of a soft slap and an adorable baby giggle followed.

'I apologise for my unruly husband Kim, but I honestly didn't know, or I _never_ would've called' replied Kurt, 'I thought your cell was on silent, I just wanted to leave you a message before I forgot.'

'It's fine, it isn't any worse than coming to a seminar with baby puke on my jacket.'

I heard a pained groan come from Kurt, and a tiny whimper from his equally dramatic daughter.

'Tell your child that it's fine, she'll just have to pay me back for the dry cleaning bill when you start giving her pocket money.'

Kurt laughed, and Tori joined in. She's a very happy baby, and laughs all the time. Usually at nothing, but we never told my dad that his monkey impression wasn't that funny. His face when she laughed like a drain for ten minutes was too precious to ruin.

'Yes, well actually that's kind of connected to what I wanted to talk to you about…'

I raised an eyebrow at Kurt's peculiar tone of voice.

'Go on…'

'See, Blaine and I were wondering if-'

I glanced down at my watch to see that I had five minutes before my next lecture, and leapt up from my seat.

'CRAP! Oh my god Kurt, I'm so sorry, I have to go or I'll miss my class. Evie and I are coming over for dinner tonight though right?'

'Um, yeh… Yeh, sorry, yes you are' he answered.

'Okay then, we'll talk later. Tell your 'unruly husband' to expect some payback for the phone thing.'

'Oh I will' he laughed, 'don't worry. See you soon!'

* * *

><p>Evie and I were greeted at the door later that evening with the not <em>entirely<em> unwelcome sight of a half-naked Blaine holding a wriggling infant in one arm and an open and half empty jar of passata in the other.

'Um… Fun evening?' asked Evie tentatively.

'Oh so fun, isn't it Tori? Isn't it fun getting tomatoes all down papa's new shirt and your own new dress that daddy made for you? Isn't it fun to start screaming as soon as papa tries to give you a bath to get said tomatoes out of your hair? Hmm?'

He punctuated his question with a raised eyebrow, which Tori proceeded to reach out and grab.

'Of course' he sighed, adjusting the utterly transfixed baby in his arms.

'B?' came Kurt's voice from the kitchen, 'Is that Kim and Evie?'

Turning his head as much as he could without losing an eyebrow to his daughter's death grip, Blaine leaned around to answer.

'Yeh honey, but I need you to come take Tori so I can find a new shirt. It's hardly appropriate to be semi-naked whilst eating…'

Kurt came to join us in the entryway, wiping his hands on a teatowel to hug both Evie and I tightly.

'To be honest Blaine, I don't think any of us would particularly mind' he laughed, letting go of us and bending slightly to kiss his husband and his daughter, who relinquished her hold on her papa's face in favour of her daddy's hair.

Kurt groaned as the tiny tomato covered fingers tangled in his immaculate hairstyle.

'Tori honey' he began, despite knowing full well she wouldn't understand his request, 'can you let go of daddy's hair and go with papa to have a bath?'

She fixed him with an amusingly confused stare, before tugging on his hair and giggling.

Kurt rolled his eyes (to a plethora of more giggles) and nuzzled his nose against his daughters.

'Please grow out of this obsession soon baby girl, or daddy will be bald by the time he's thirty.'

The laughter merely continued as Blaine came to disentangle her hands from his husband increasingly messy locks.

'Right, come on you little monster, it's bath time for you.'

Blaine whisked her away before any more fuss could be made, the sound of Tori's adorable laughs fading as her papa shut the bathroom door.

'So…' Kurt began, grimacing as he pulled the sauce out of his hair, 'dinner?'

* * *

><p>Dinner at the Hummel-Anderson household was a lot less refined now that a baby was involved. For one, Kurt was a lot less into experimental cooking now, serving us with simple yet still delicious spaghetti Bolognese as opposed to whatever concoction he may have had time to come up with without the presence of a tiny messy human. Said tiny messy human lived up to her title as she played with her organic baby food, smearing it all over her highchair table and whatever adult she could reach, putting only the absolute minimum into her actual mouth.<p>

Needless to say, none of us escaped unscathed, and by the time we'd finished eating and Tori was onto her dessert (Farleys rusks, which Blaine and I kept stealing), we were all grubby with 'Tasty Vegetable Risotto' (a lie if ever I heard one) and mashed banana, and Tori was looking decidedly pleased with herself.

After we'd all been cleaned to the best of our abilities, we settled in the living room, Tori curled up quite contentedly on Kurt's chest whilst Blaine looked on with literal heart eyes.

'I'm sure you're wondering what I was going to ask you on the phone earlier' said Kurt, adjusting his position on the sofa to curl into his husbands side.

'Um…' I began, looking to Evie for an answer but receiving only a shrug in return, 'I'd actually completely forgotten. But go ahead now.'

'Well…' Kurt paused and looked at Blaine, an unspoken conversation passing between them which, as always, I couldn't decipher.

'We'd like you two to babysit Tori for us, if you want to.'

'Oh…'

Blaine was quick to clarify after seeing the apprehensive looks on mine and Evie's faces (what can I say, we're not _really_ baby people).

'I know we haven't asked before, and that it might be weird being alone with her or whatever, but my record company is 'throwing me a party' to celebrate my new album, and despite the fact that I'm only allowed one guest of my own to attend and it's probably going to be the worst thing ever, Kurt and I really have to make an appearance and there's nobody else we'd trust with her, to be honest.'

'Errr…'

'Please girls, you'd really be doing us a favour…'

'I think I did you a pretty big favour when I gave birth to her' I replied in a cautiously joking tone.

Kurt stuck his tongue out at me and adjusted the wriggly six month old in his arms.

'Look at her Kim, she's an absolute angel, you'll both be brilliant at it!'

I took his advice and looked at the little girl right in the eyes.

My eyes.

Damn it.

I rubbed a hand across my forehead and turned to Evie, who smiled at me to confirm her acceptance with the answer she always knew I'd give.

'Fine' I sighed, 'Fine, we will babysit your 'angel' of a daughter. And she best be an angel, or I'm suing for false advertising.'

Blaine threw his head back as he laughed, and reached over to stroke his daughters dark curls.

'She is', he replied, 'she's the most perfect baby there is.'

* * *

><p>Four days later, and we were in Kurt and Blaine's sitting room once more, about to be left alone with an unusually sullen Tori for at least four hours.<p>

'So we've left all the numbers on the dining table, and there's a couple of jars of baby food on the counter for when she inevitably gets hungry', Kurt informed us, spraying a final layer of hairspray onto his perfect hairstyle and smoothing the non-existent creases from his shirt.

Blaine was a little less calm about the entire thing.

'Okay, when she goes to bed you have to read her a story, and it has to be one that is over in less than five minutes because otherwise she'll never sleep. And then you have to turn her mobile on and cover her in the purple blanket, and it has to be fluffy side up because the weather is too warm for fluffy side down. If she starts crying then she likes to be sung to, but you can't sing anything too slow or she gets bored, and she likes being held against your left shoulder whilst you sing to her because she likes the warmth more on that side of her body… Oh, and when you give her a bath you _have_ to have pink ducky in there with her, or she'll cry and cry. OH and when you feed her, none of that airplane stuff, just feed her and maybe make funny faces, she likes those… OH and-'

'Blaine, honey, I think they're going to be okay. You wrote all that stuff down, remember?' Kurt asked soothingly, rubbing between Blaine's shoulder blades in an attempt to calm him down.

Blaine sighed and rubbed his forehead, before reaching out to take Tori from Evie's arms. Her little arms immediately reached for her papa, but Kurt pulled him back.

'B, if you take her now then you won't let go. We both know that. It's going to be absolutely fine, nothing bad will happen, alright? I know it's hard, but it's just a few hours…'

Blaine seemed highly reluctant to tear his gaze from his daughters, but he eventually turned to Kurt.

'I know' he replied quietly, leaning to rest his head in the crook of Kurt's neck, 'it's just really damn hard.'

Kurt laughed and kissed the shorter man's hair, before pulling back and reaching for Blaine's hand.

'I know baby. But we'll be back soon.'

With one last glance back at Tori, Blaine nodded and the two of them headed for the front door, pulling it closed behind them after a quiet _'you haven't called me baby since before we got married'_ from Blaine, and a _'well maybe it's time I brought it back'_ from Kurt.

* * *

><p>'Kim, is it just me or does Tori look miserable?'<p>

I scoffed slightly, because that child never looks miserable, but when I turned to Evie and Tori at the dining table, I had to admit that the little girl did look somewhat… discomfited.

'I'm sure she's fine', I replied, though with less conviction, and returned to them with a jar of 'Cheesy Spinach and Potato Bake', 'she probably knows that we're about to force her to eat this stuff.'

We both leaned in to take a whiff of the food and quickly recoiled.

'See? Poor kid must be dying for the day she can actually chew stuff and get away from these vile concoctions.'

'Fair point' Evie conceded, taking some Farleys rusks from the box and handing one to me, 'though when did these get this good? I _hated_ them as a kid…'

'They've always been good!'

A little cough interrupted our conversation, and we both turned to see Tori staring at us expectantly.

'Did she… Did she really just cough to get our attention?'

I felt Tori's forehead with the back of my hand and frowned.

'She doesn't have a fever or anything. She may just have a cough. There's absolutely no way she has that level of social intelligence yet…'

'Are you sure? Maybe we should google it…'

I rolled my eyes and brought a spoonful of food to Tori's waiting mouth.

'Okay, go and google it, I'm just going to try and make her eat the disgustingly unappealing green slime okay?'

'Okay!' replied Evie, and she walked off to the hallway to collect her laptop.

She returned a few seconds later, already accessing a child development website.

'Well apparently it's normal…' she said, raising an eyebrow, 'shows how much we know about babies.'

I looked back to Tori, who was staring at Evie with an unusually blank expression.

'Um, maybe you should google the normal reaction to parents leaving their child for the first time. Because I think we broke Kurt and Blaine's baby…'

'We did not break her!' replied Evie in an indignant tone, 'I'm sure it's completely normal for her reaction to be this way…'

'But she's not actually _doing_ anything Evie… I mean, if she were upset wouldn't she be crying or something? Because right now the only resemblance I can see is with that creepy kid Damian from 'The Omen'…'

'KIM!' Evie exclaimed, standing up abruptly and causing Tori to crane her neck up to keep her gaze trained on her face, 'she's perfectly normal! You know, she's your biological kid, you really shouldn't compare her to the devil incarnate…'

'Is that what he was? I never made it more than half an hour into that movie, I hate creepy kids. Needless to say, this situation is a bit strange…'

'I'm sure she's _fine_ Kim…' answered Evie in a less than certain tone.

'Maybe we should call someone, just in case.'

We both glanced down at Tori, who was now just staring at her hands.

'I think that would be a good idea…'

* * *

><p>'<em>Well hello old girl, what on earth are you doing calling me tonight? I thought you were babysitting Victoria today?'<em>

'Yeh dad, we are, that's why we're calling. We're um… We're a bit concerned about Tori.'

I heard him chuckle at the other end of the line, and looked at Evie where she was sitting across the room with a quiet Tori in her arms.

'_Why that girl is the happiest baby alive, why are you concerned about her?'_

'That's the point dad, she isn't being the happiest baby alive today. She's not being… well, she's not being _anything_ really. She's just… blank.'

'_Oh honey, I know it's not a normal reaction, but this is the first time she's properly been away from both of her parents. You were like that too apparently, though I never saw it, you were always happy with me and your mum.'_

'Are you sure you're not saying that just to reassure me? Because I need you to be honest right now dad.'

'_I promise Kim, you really scared your babysitter until she managed to figure out how to make you happy again. Try and find a way to make her laugh, okay?'_

'Okay dad… Thank you.'

'_It's alright old girl. I'll see you soon, okay? Love you.'_

'Love you too.'

I put down the phone and went over to Evie and Tori.

'Alright, dad says we need to make her laugh and she'll be back to normal happy baby Tori. Apparently I went all 'Rosemary's Baby' on our babysitter too, and I turned out just fine.'

Evie rolled her eyes and stroked through Tori's hair.

'Can you stop making cult devil references please? She's perfectly normal, she's just upset and dealing with it in her own way.'

'I know! Let's just find a way to make her laugh. It can't be that hard…'

* * *

><p>'This is bloody impossible…'<p>

Two hours of stupid faces and inappropriate rapping (Friends lies…) and many trialled toys later, and Tori was still just as uninterested as ever.

'I swear' Evie continued, 'the combination of Blaine's hair gel and your perfume somehow combined and mutated this child's genes in some way. She always laughs! ALWAYS!'

'I KNOW!' I replied, abandoning the laughing Elmo toy I'd been trying for the last ten minutes, 'I _know_. Ugh, let's just give her a bath or something.'

'Okay, yes, bathtime. Pink ducky could work?'

'Good plan Batman', I replied, scooping Tori up and stepping over the deluge of toys on the floor, 'to the bathroom!'

We managed to get Tori into a perfect temperature bath, complete with all the Blaine-recommended toys, certainly including pink ducky, but not even a smile crept onto her face.

'Okay, this is ridiculous now'

I glanced over at Evie, who was now hopelessly brandishing pink ducky in front of Tori's face, but the bait was not being taken.

'Maybe we should call someone else?' I suggested.

'Yeh, like who?'

'Um… Oh, what about David?'

Understandably, Evie raised a sceptical eyebrow.

'No, think about it. He's had to work in paediatrics before, and those kids aren't exactly supposed to be happy about their situation, so he must've learned a few tricks!'

Evie sighed in resignation before replying.

'We're kinda grasping at straws now, but it can't hurt. Go and call him, I'll finish the bath.'

* * *

><p>'<em>Honey, you do know I'm at work right now?'<em>

'Yes, I do, but this is an emergency!'

'_What? Oh my god Kim, you're babysitting right now, did something happen to Tori, is she hurt?'_

'What? No, Tori's fine, kind of…'

'_Kind of, what do you mean kind of? Kimmy, you're scaring me now, whats going on?'_

'Okay, well Tori is acting all creepy horror movie on us, and she's not doing _anything_, and we phoned my dad and he said that it was fine and we just needed to make her laugh, but we haven't figured out how and I assumed you'd have some advice considering your paeds experience…'

David cut me off with a low rumbling laugh.

'_Kim… I haven't worked with kids since my second year of med school. I know nothing about them, except how to fix their brains. Neurologist, remember?'_

'Well this is kind of fixing her brain!'

'_Honey, I cannot help with this one. You and Evie will figure it out, you're smart like that. Now I really have to go. I love you.'_

I couldn't help but grin at that, the newness of the fortnight old words washing over me like a warm breeze and making me feel completely at ease with the world.

'I love you too. Go save some lives or something.'

'_I will.'_

I walked back to the bathroom with a slight spring in my step and flung open the bathroom door.

'Well, David has no idea but he has faith that- AHHH!'

Undetected by my rose tinted vision, one of Tori's many toys was right in my path as I walked towards Evie at the other end of the bathroom. Needless to say, my foot landed in just the right position and I went down like a log, landing with a painful thud and a worrying _'crunch!'_.

'Oh my god Kimmy! You made her laugh!'

I looked up from my position on the floor clutching my painfully throbbing ankle to see Tori giggling away in the bath, looking like the happiest baby on earth.

'Oh thank god, she's normal!' cried Evie, lifting her up and spinning her round, making her laugh away even more, 'Yes you are, aren't you? You are the most lovable baby ever! Kim, come over here and give her a cuddle now she's happy again!'

She spun around to find me still on the floor, biting my bottom lip to keep from shouting out.

'Oh crap…'

* * *

><p>'It's definitely fractured, Dr Miller.'<p>

Fabulous.

'It's not too severe, six weeks in a cast and crutches and you'll be back to normal. I'll set to work on that now, is there any colour of cast you're preferential to?'

I looked over to Evie and Kim sitting near the display of cast colours to find the little girl stoking one of them with a reverential look.

'I think we'll go with that one, doc…'

* * *

><p>Out in the waiting room we sat waiting for Kurt and Blaine to come and collect us. Evie had phoned and told them where we were, and after hastily reassuring them that Tori was well, they insisted that they must come and fetch us from A&amp;E.<p>

I was reading an outdated copy of 'Cosmopolitan' when a familiar looking face wandered into the waiting area.

'Hi, I'm down here to collect Ms- Kim?'

David abandoned his reception enquiry and rushed over to us.

'Kim, what the hell happened?'

'Um, we found a way to make Tori laugh?'

He sighed in an amused manner and sat down next to me, pulling me into an awkward hug.

'Was it really necessary to break bones to do it?'

I shrugged playfully and he kissed my cheek lightly.

'I don't know, but it worked!'

'Life is never boring with you, is it?'

'Never.'

We kissed again before he leaned in to whisper in my ear.

'_Guess I'll be taking my vacation time in six weeks then?'_

'Um…' I began, 'why?'

'Well', he grinned, 'I do believe Kurt and Blaine promised us a trip to New York?'

'Ah yes, indeed they did.'

'Kim?'

My head whipped around to find said couple standing staring at my casted leg.

'Why on earth is it pink?'

The responding laugh from Tori certainly answered that.

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><p><strong>See you again soon for the next one! Hopefully it'll be quicker arriving than this one...<strong>


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